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Meanwhile Labour – who set up the Scottish Parliament and ruled with comfortable ease in the early days – have gone through eight leaders during a rapid slide from the top to nearer rock bottom.

There is no comfort in being nostalgic and no thanks for what Labour have previously delivered.

The party need to bring new ideas and energy to their members and, crucially, to those former Labour voters who are still waiting for Labour to come back to them.

Either Richard Leonard or Anas Sarwar will today take up the mantle of trying to turn Labour into a winning machine again.

Anas Sarwar could be the next Labour leader (Image: PA)

Here are some tips on how it might be done:

Left or right?

The sometimes bitter contest for the Scottish Labour leadership has been cast as a battle between the left and the right, personified by Corbyn-backed former trade unionist Leonard and former MP and son of a millionaire politician Sarwar.

Very quickly, the party have to get over the divide by respecting and uniting the backbiting elements in parliament and beyond.

The Corbyn effect, which saw many in the party shocked – along with the majority of outside observers – to go from one to seven MPs in the summer election, has had an undoubted effect.

But overall, the party only picked up 10,000 more votes as result.

Revival has to be based on a much stronger and wider appeal than that.

Combining the appeal of patriotism with an appeal to left-leaning voters took the SNP so far.

But now, when it comes down to brass tacks, the nationalists will find it hard to put their money where their mouths are and risk alienating their right-wing supporters with Scottish tax rises.

They need the Labour Party to do the running for them.

Richard Leonard may end up in the running for the next First Minister (Image: PA)

Tax rises are right if they are used to tackle inequality – and both candidates have put forward arresting tax plans.

The Labour Party should always be to the left of the SNP. But watch out – the SNP need a left-wing patsy for their tax increases. So if you’re going to be radical on tax, make sure you own the idea. Do not sell support to an SNP tax budget without guarantees.

There is plenty of room to be radical on many other issues apart from tax.

● On immigration, of which Scotland needs a lot more

● On linking land reform to housing provision

● On shaping an NHS fit for its 2045 centenary, delivering as much primary health care to patients in their homes as possible.

All these policies are radical – some might even call them left-wing.

But more than that, they are common sense – and the job the Labour leader has to do is communicate them as such.

North or south?

Of course, the left-right divide in the party and the country is not the only issue to run through Scottish politics.

The air is still dominated by the constitutional question – although like Robert the Bruce consulting with the spider, the issue might be resting in a cave until the implications of Brexit are clearer.

What hasn’t been crystal clear since the referendum is where Labour stand on the constitution.

Those Labour voters who stuck doggedly with the party during the divisive vote were left with the impression, by Kez Dugdale and others, that the party were not sure of their direction.

The Tories were quick to capitalise on that, easily branding themselves as the party of the Union and the main anti-nationalist force.

No less than one in four of those who voted Labour in 2015 switched directly to the Conservatives in 2017 as a result.

Being against nationalism but for Scotland is quite a highwire act but Dugdale also provided the solution.

In her short time in office, she succeeded in federalising the Labour Party, giving the Scottish party control over their own candidates, their own manifesto and a seat on the UK party’s ruling body, the NEC.

The next challenge is to make federalisation one of the major issues in UK politics.

This, to paraphrase the late John Smith, is the unfinished work of the Labour Party.

It’s a hard sell but making Scotland bigger in Britain and pressing to change UK politics and reform Westminster is a job that can start in Holyrood.

Win or lose?

There is no point in being leader of the Scottish Labour Party just to stop the other man or woman being there. The winner today must set their sights on bigger things, like being the next first minister.

The will to win, as the SNP demonstrated in 2007 and tapped into again in the 2014 referendum, gives a political movement a lot of momentum.

Capturing the imagination of the party and the nation is one of the biggest tasks of the next Labour leader in Scotland.

It is not an admin job, it is not even a managerial job – it is a missionary calling.

That said, the list of radical policies in Scottish politics is very short, and a blank page for the next Labour leader.

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The party can afford to take risks on issues like migration, taxation and education. But they have to prove that everything they do is rooted in the idea of improving the lives of the poorest in society.

The leader has to show that they are there for the whole of Scotland and go out there to show the world that not all the country’s leaders are nationalists.

Labour always have been, and always should be, there for those who have no voice of their own.

That’s the job and these are the people Labour have to win for.

Be the bigger person in the room.

Scotland, Britain and the whole of western politics have been digging into trenches since the big crash of 2008.

The divisions of the Scottish referendum were as much a reaction to the breakdown of mainstream politics as they were a reflection of nationalism.

Politics is being pushed to extremes and to isolationism, which is a dangerous situation.

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Recognise that there is nothing unique about Scotland, reach out to your opponents, co-operate when it is for the common good, lead with some humility and style that shows you are willing to listen to the wisdom of others.

Scottish Labour need a new direction for sure, but Scotland needs someone be the first person to move on from the politics of division.